German Muslims Compare Anti-Immigrant AfD Party to Hitler’s Nazis

Members of the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) arrive for a news conference in Berlin, Germany. Muslims in Germany have compared AfD to Hitler's Nazis.

BERLIN, April 18 – A leader of German Muslims on Monday likened the attitude of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party towards his community to that of Hitler’s Nazis towards Jews.

The AfD entered three state parliaments last month by luring voters angry with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome mainly Muslim refugees fleeing war in Syria, and says Islam is incompatible with Germany’s constitution.

“It is the first time since Hitler’s Germany that a whole religious community is discredited and existentially threatened,” Aiman Mazyek, head of Germany’s Central Council of Muslims, told German television.

He was responding to AfD plans, announced at the weekend, to press for bans on minarets and burqas at its congress in two weeks’ time.

“The AfD is riding a wave of Islamophobia,” Mazyek said. “This is not an anti-Islam path, it is an anti-democratic path.”

Merkel’s conservatives have also called for an effective ban on the burqa, saying the full body covering of some Muslim women should not be worn in public. But they have not said Islam is incompatible with the constitution.

AfD leaders say the influx of more than one million migrants last year, mainly Muslims fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, makes the “Islamization of Germany” a real threat.

The rise of the AfD has alarmed mainstream parties, who rely on compromise to form coalitions.

Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat, accused the AfD of using language similar to that of Hitler’s Nazis.